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Our family is growing in many ways... Growing in numbers, knowledge, parenting skills, growing in love, in our faith, growing our culinary skills (if you can call it that), growing without gluten (some of us), growing green...........

Friday, May 6, 2011

Meal Plan

The week is almost over, but I thought I would post it anyway. It's been harder and harder to find time to get on here to blog, but I do have lots of things to post when I get the chance... Some day...

Instead of putting up our schedule, here's a quick (or not-so-quick) run-down of what we're having this week.

Spaghetti with quinoa noodles & salad. We're really liking the quinoa noodles (they're made with a mixture of organic quinoa and corn flours). They taste just like regular noodles, quinoa is really good for you, and you can't tell they're gluten-free. My only complaint is that (with the spaghetti noodles, at least) there's only enough for one night with a little bit of noodles left over. We make meals to last at least two nights, so... I'm glad the quinoa noodles are good because Aiden still doesn't like things with marinara sauce. I don't get it. This time I was smart enough to give him noodles by themselves and some sauce on the side. He ate the noodles.

Salmon, asparagus, and corn... Well, this meal got scrapped, actually. We were supposed to grill burgers Sunday night, but we ran late at the grocery and grabbed burgers on the way home. Kind of ironic to go to Whole Foods, load up on whole, organic, healthy foods...and then get fast food to eat for dinner. But that's what we did. So, we did the grilling on the night we were supposed to have salmon. We were supposed to also keep the asparagus on the menu, but mama just forgot all about it. So, we'll put it with another meal this week - probably tonight. We got the asparagus at the Farmer's Market on Saturday, and it still looks fabulous! We also are going to a different FM now...the big one in Raleigh might be big and open every day, but there is one in Morrisville that is much smaller BUT seems to mainly have either organic produce or produce grown without pesticides (meat at both places are primiarily grass-fed with no added hormones/antibiotics, but there are actually more folks with meat at this FM). While we found a couple places that had pesticide-free produce at the big FM, most of the vendors seemed to react negatively when we questioned their use of them - not to knock that FM, really. But...we're going where the good stuff (and *more* if it) is.

Veggie Lentil loaf, mashed potatoes, and...we'll put the asparagus with this meal instead of the frozen peas we were going to have. I found the recipe for the veggie lentil loaf (like meat loaf...but no meat and gluten-free) in KIWI Magazine. Surprisingly Camden saw it on the menu and even saw the recipe...and didn't make any nasty comments and is curious to see how it tastes. Score! Also, I've been wanting to try out this magazine. I guess you could say it's kind of like a Parenting/Parents mag, but it focuses on more organic, eco-friendly kind of things...you know, right in line with me! My friend, Becky, saw one of those deal-of-the-day sites offering it for a great price (it's not the cheapest magazine...not super expensive, but when you realize it only comes out every two months, it's not too cheap), I jumped on the chance to subscribe. I've only gotten one magazine so far, but I *love* it! Totally my kind of magazine, and I'll definitely want to keep subscribing!

Sesame chicken, rice, roasted broccoli. This was a homemade version of sesame chicken, meant to be healthier b/c it wasn't breaded or fried. More like stir-fry type dish. I got it from my Food Network magazine, a recipe by Ellie Krieger (who is known for making healthier versions of things). And I didn't have chili paste and didn't want to buy it to try out a dish for the first time (I might try to find it for next time, though). But we really liked it! Aiden ate it up, too - and he's not always keen on dishes made primarily of meat (except for burgers). It's definitely a weekend dish for me because the prep work isn't all that fast. I'm also getting addicted to this roasted broccoli dish. I could eat those babies just about everyday! The boys think they're ok...and I'm hoping with keeping it on the menu fairly often, they'll soon love it, too.

Let me know if you want any of the recipes for dishes with no links. A couple were from magazines, and I couldn't find them online but am happy to share!

We're also doing a new thing with veggies. I'm keeping sliced raw veggies, such as carrots, zucchini, bell peppers, celery, etc in the fridge and pulling them out every night at dinner. If the kids aren't loving what we're having, they have those on the table to pick from. I put out hummus and some dressings, too. Both boys have been eating them up like crazy! Even veggies they normally wouldn't really be crazy about...just having them there to eat if they want (we put them out but say nothing about it - it's within everyone's reach, and they grab what they want!). Camden eats a lot of carrots and zucchini. Aiden eats a mix of stuff with hummus. It's pretty great. Plus, they have less reason to complain if they don't like dinner. And since there's no pressure, they eat more than they normally would. I'm definitely going to keep this up! We usually eat these veggies throughout the week, but I noticed very quickly last week that we suddenly were going through these veggies a LOT quicker than we usually do.

2 comments:

I get Kiwi magazine too and I love it! I actually marked that same recipe to try but I haven't made it yet. You'll have to let me know how it turns out! That's a great idea about putting out the veggies with dinner. Sometimes I put out a bowl of carrots while I'm cooking dinner to keep the girls from harassing me about being hungry. They usually just grab those and eat them without any complaints. I should try that with more veggies too!

Well, the lentil veggie loaf was not as great as we had hoped. :( It wasn't terrible, don't get me wrong. But..eh. Ryan said, "It's ok, but I don't want to eat it again." To which I replied, "Yeah, it's ok, but I don't want to make it again."

The taste wasn't all that bad...tastes like lentils! So, of you like lentils, it's not terrible. But the texture..it was way too soft. It didn't cut into nice slices that I could lift out of the pan. It all fell apart b/c it was just too soft. I cooked it exactly the way the recipe said, too... It was also a lot of prep work. And even though I have a large food processor (11 cups), I was worried it wouldn't hold the lentil mixture when processing that (not the veggie mixture - just the lentil part). 2 1/2 cups of uncooked lentils ends up being a LOT of lentils! It worked - I did put in parts at a time instead of all at once, but it took a while.

I try to remmeber to put carrots and things out before dinner sometimes, but I usually forget... If I'm using carrots with what I'm cooking, I always remember to cut up about twice as much as what I need, esp for stir fry, b/c Aiden always comes by to see what I'm doing...and then eats half of them! ;) Tonight...he didn't even try the lentil loaf, he ate a bit of asparagus, and he only tried the mashed potatoes on his finger (neither of my boys like mashed potatoes! Ugh!), but he ate a whole bunch of green bell peppers! So, I was happy. At least it's something. :)

We might still have the rest of the lentil loaf... Ryan's finishing cleaning up, and I think the plan was to toss the rest (which I hate doing, esp after ALL that work! But we really aren't going to eat it). We can save it if you want to just try that! Haha!